


Impact

by lanestreets



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Relationship, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 17:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15756579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanestreets/pseuds/lanestreets
Summary: Clint Barton is not born with wings.He is not a mutant, though he doubts that would have helped his case.He is an ordinary boy, until he, one day, is very suddenly not.Or: the wingfic nobody asked for, in which Clint's wings have brought him nothing but trouble until one day, they suddenly don't.





	Impact

**Author's Note:**

> as it says in the tags! there is mentions of child abuse in this fic, along with clint dealing with a lot of self worth issues, and non-consensual body modification (referenced and discussed by characters) so please be careful. also, a character breaks bones in here, so watch out for that too!

Clint Barton is not born with wings.

He is not a mutant, though he doubts that would have helped his case. 

He is an ordinary boy, until he, one day, is very suddenly not.

When Clint is young, he lives with his mom and his dad and his big brother Barney, and for a very short time, things are okay. His mother loves him and his dad is a little angry sometimes but it’s mostly alright. But very soon, his dad is a lot angry most of the time, and Clint knows how to hide a bruise before he knows how to tie his own shoelaces. 

When Clint is a little older, things are less okay, and Barney is angry a lot now too, and his mom is sad and his dad is mad and Clint is very, very afraid.

And then, very suddenly, it’s just him and Barney.

And Clint is still afraid. 

They are two boys from a broken home and it’s so very easy for their names to slip through the cracks, and before he knows it, Clint and his brother are no longer wards of the state, no longer given even that thin protection. 

Clint Barton is six years old and he knows the mechanics of shady deals better than he knows the alphabet. 

Clint Barton is six years old, and he knows pain more than he knows love, and he does not know it’s meant to be any other way.

The men who take them want them for something Clint doesn’t really understand, but he knows that he doesn’t like it. He knows it hurts. He knows he wants it to stop. He knows he wants his mom to tell him it will all be okay. 

But all he has is Barney, and it continues, and it doesn’t stop hurting and Clint feels like the dried tear tracks on his cheeks are never going to go away. 

A few weeks into their stay, the men who took them seem to decide Barney isn’t working out for whatever it is that they’re doing, and so most days, Barney stays in their little room that’s really more of a cell and Clint is taken to the room with all of the machines and pokey things and he hates every second of it, but they tell him they’ll hurt Barney if he fights, and as much as Clint fears his brother, he fears being without him even more.

So Clint screams and cries but he does not fight, and the men who took them inject him with something and they do something that  _ hurts _ to Clint’s back and then they bring him back to the not-room and Barney yells at him for not being stronger when he cries and the pain in his back gets worse every day  and he does not fight. 

One day, Clint returns to the not-room and Barney looks at him with disgust plain on his face, and asks what the fuck is on his back and Clint can’t see because there’s no mirror but it hurts and why doesn’t Barney care that it hurts? 

Everyday the disgust on Barney’s face gets worse and worse and every day the pain gets worse until one day Clint wakes up and he can see what they’ve been doing to him. 

He glances over his shoulder and wakes Barney up with the scream he lets out because there is something growing from his back, pink and ugly and dusted with a layer of downy feathers. 

Barney wakes up and yells at Clint and when Clint doesn’t calm down, Barney hits him, and that makes him fall very suddenly silent, but he cannot settle his breathing or quell the panic clawing in his chest. 

That day, Clint fights, because he is afraid, and when he returns to the not-room, Barney has a bruise high on his cheek bone and angry words for Clint on his lips, and Clint shrinks under the attention, and curls up in a corner as far away from Barney as he can and falls asleep there. 

He doesn’t fight again, but it is no longer because he is afraid of what they’ll do to Barney. Now, he’s afraid of what Barney will do to him. 

And so it goes. 

Clint Barton is nine years old and he knows pain like the back of his hand and fear like his own heartbeat and he is so very, very sick of it. 

So he takes what they have taught him, and he uses the wings they have forced on him and he takes his brother and he leaves. 

There is a fair amount of fighting involved in it, and they use something to try to stop them that costs Clint his hearing, but in the end, it boils down to just that. 

He leaves.

They leave and they walk for almost a day until they hit the edges of the nearest town and they find a big colorful tent in what should probably be an empty field, and they sneak in to get out of the rain, and are promptly caught. 

The man they run into snags them both by the backs of their depressingly grey shirts and looks them both up and down, drenched, soaking wet, Clint with  _ wings _ sticking out of his back, and grunts and steers them through the tent. They exit through a back flap and hurry through the rain to where there are trailers parked. The man shoves them into the biggest trailer, and they come face to face with another man who’s equally intimidating to them, Clint nearly shakes clean out of his skin right then and there. 

But nothing happens, and they exit the trailer with jobs and the promise of a roof and three square meals a day and hearing aids for Clint as long as they help with stuff around the circus. Little hands are better suited to some tasks. 

It turns out that little hands are also better suited to stealing things, but that’s something they don’t bring up until later. Until Clint and Barney are too far indebted to them to say no. 

After the thieving, when they’ve got blackmail and a debt hanging over their heads, they tell Clint that he could be making them even more money, and Clint makes the mistake of asking ‘how’.

Swordsman trains him, and then so does Trickshot, and pretty soon the ever so cleverly named “Hawkeye” has taken the center ring with the other acts, introduced as a sideshow freak. 

Clint hates it, but he has no other choice but to comply, they’ve got too much leverage on him. 

Clint Barton is 18 years old when he he finally gets the balls to turn on Swordsman, and the only thing that gets him is the rest of the circus turning on him, and his brother spitting in his face and leaving, and Clint is very, very alone. 

It’s probably why when Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD approaches him, slumped in a chair at a police station after he got picked up for petty theft, Clint says yes to the job offer. 

He says yes, on the one condition that no one else knows about the wings. 

Coulson agrees easily and gives Clint a sleek black business card with nothing besides an address on it, and tells him to sort out what he needs to sort out and report there at 0600 the next morning. Clint shoulders the backpack he has with him, and tells Coulson that this is all he has. He can go now, he just needs a minute. 

Coulson just nods and leans back against the wall, and Clint hurries into the bathroom, and wraps his wings around his chest, and binds them there as tightly as he can without restricting his breathing. His shirt is loose and when he tosses on an unbuttoned flannel over top of it, it’s unnoticeable. 

He returns to Coulson, and Coulson leads him to a car and that is the end of the life Clint knew. 

Clint Barton is nineteen years old and he is the youngest Agent on the SHIELD payroll, though no one knows that besides Phil Coulson, Maria Hill and Nick Fury. He’s also the only enhanced on SHIELD’s payroll, but again. No one really knows that. He keeps his wings bound at all times when he’s out of his quarters, undoes the bindings when he takes out his hearing aids at night, and no one but Coulson and Fury know that he’s a freak. 

He’s a normal Agent, albeit a very good one, and one with a very odd choice of weaponry, but still he’s just another Agent to everyone who isn’t Coulson. He works his way to a Senior Agent and then Special Agent and then Specialist, and he’s the guy they call in for stuff no one else can handle, and they dispatch him to make the calls they know that others may hesitate at, and he is good at his job.

Clint Barton is twenty three years old and he is sent after the deadliest assassin known to the intelligence community and he looks at her and all he sees is himself, young and made into something he didn’t want to be and unable to be anything else for fear of repercussions. So he slings his bow onto his back, and puts the arrow back in his quiver and makes himself known to her and brings her home very much alive. 

Fury and Hill each spend about an hour chewing him out like it’s going out of style, and make it very clear that he is responsible for the Black Widow now that he’s brought the girl in to SHIELD, and that if she fucks up it’s his ass on the line too. He’s well versed in anger, by now, so he grins and bears it, and as they leave, he jokes with the girl and makes it very, very clear that he does not blame her for the verbal dressing down he’d just gotten, and that he is not mad at her for it. 

Coulson greets them in the hallway, and leads them to the containment quarters the two of them will be confined to until the Black Widow has made progress in breaking her programming. The Black Widow will not be allowed to leave the quarters when Clint is out on missions, and when Clint is there, she will not be allowed to leave the facility, with an insane number of security measures in place. Clint will not be able to keep his weapons in the quarters, nor any of his identification tags or cards to make sure that she cannot use his IDs to gain access to any of the armories, she’s been fitted with an ankle monitor. There are so many new protocols for him to follow Clint thinks he’s going to forget at least half of them. But the girl’s alive. That’s what matters. 

The smug smile on Coulson’s face tells Clint that he was selected for this mission for exactly that purpose. 

Clint Barton is twenty five, and Natalia Romanova is twenty when Natalia becomes Natasha Romanoff, and is assigned to Coulson, and the three of them become Strike Team Delta. 

Natasha does not know about Clint’s wings, and it stays that way, because she’s become as good as his sister, and he does not want to deal with the inevitable fall out of her realizing he’s a freak.

Clint Barton is thirty one years old when he is dispatched to New Mexico with Coulson, while Natasha remains in New York with Fury, undercover to keep an eye on a dying Tony Stark. 

It is the first time that Strike Team Delta has been separated for longer than a couple of days since they were assigned to each other. 

It makes Clint’s wings itch. 

He still keeps them bound tightly the whole time he’s on duty, despite how desperately they strain to be released when he’s in the lift, an arrow nocked and aimed at a guy’s chest while he takes out a dozen of their best agents and makes for the crazy, maybe alien hammer stuck in a rock.

Clint Barton’s life only gets goddamn weirder.

Turns out, he was pointing an arrow at an actual literal god, there are billionaire tin men flying around in the sky, there’s a doctor turning green and levelling boroughs and they’ve just defrosted a national icon. 

But hey. Fuck it, he guesses.

Clint Barton is thirty four years old when he has the singular most terrifying week of his entire life. Loki walks out of that cosmic gateway and Clint’s entire life changes. He’s lived through some pretty terrible stuff, but at least he’s always been in control of himself before. But now. 

Now. 

Now he can’t even attempt to defend himself. He’s at Loki’s beck and call, pliant to his every whim and it’s fucking petrifying that someone has that much control over him. Luckily, by some absolute miracle, Loki never finds out about the wings, never makes him reveal himself to anyone else. 

He makes Clint murder sixty three of his friends and coworkers and Loki kills Phil, so it’s not really an adequate trade off. 

But Clint’s secret is still safe, he guesses. 

Lucky fucking him. 

Clint Barton is thirty six years old when SHIELD falls, and Steve comes home toting a slightly damp man with a metal arm. Steve’s brought the Winter Fucking Soldier into Avengers Tower’s living room like it’s an everyday occurrence. Clint’s wings flutter and flex in alarm under the binds and his ribs ache like they normally do now, because he’s been more paranoid about keeping his wings wrapped lately. He ignores it, he knows how to deal with the pain, and greets the Winter Soldier as though the man is not the stuff of even  _ Natasha’s _ nightmares. 

“Hey, man, what should we call you?” he asks, because he knows that was the first step Natasha took in reclaiming her identity. Deciding what she wanted to be called. 

The guy seems to consider it for a long while, before he says, very softly, like he’s afraid of wanting anything, which is all too familiar to Clint, “Steve calls me Bucky, but I think I’d like to go by James, for now.”

And Clint smiles and nods, and stands, and extends his hand to the world’s deadliest assassin, and says, “Nice to meet you James. I’m Clint.” 

Because his life is already so goddamn weird, this might as well happen.

James Barnes has lived in the Tower with them for four months before there is a crisis big enough that it calls the entire team out at once. James assures them that he will be fine, he’ll stay out of trouble and even after that, they have to talk Steve out the door, and he’s distracted the entire time they deal with Monster of the Month number seven hundred billion. 

Clint really can’t blame him for his distraction, for having part of his mind on James what with that whole situation, but when he has to shove Steve out of the way of an incoming goddamn projectile, he gets a little annoyed. Especially when he hears, almost more than he feels, something in him  _ shatter _ . 

He tells the team he’s injured as soon as the threat is neutralized, and then turns off both his hearing aids and comms and fucking flees back to the Tower, because he’s not going to be of anymore use like this and because he’s in so much pain he can barely breathe. He flees to the Tower and does the last thing he ever thought he’d do. 

He knocks on James’ door, and shoves his way in, and says, “I need your help.” As soon as James gives him a skeptical nod, Clint struggles out of the top half of his uniform. 

His hands are trembling so badly he almost can’t get at the releases for his body armor, and his chest is heaving hard enough that it’s jostling whatever’s broken and he feels like he’s a half step from crying but he forces himself forward, until he’s standing there in just his uniform pants, and the bindings keeping his wings trapped. 

James’ eyebrows leap towards his hairline. 

“Clint, what the hell is… Christ, are those  _ wings _ ?” he says incredulously, and Clint makes a sound that could be a whimper.

“I know, I know, I’m a freak of nature, just--” he cuts off, and very, very carefully begins to undo the wrappings holding his wings down, but every movement jostles the wing joints in his back which in turn jostles the bent, broken, shattered part of the limb still bound to Clint’s side.

After only a moment, James steps forward, and places his hands on top of Clint’s. 

“Let me,” he says, and Clint almost sobs in relief. It’s a very near thing, but he manages to choke off the worst of the noise. James doesn’t comment. He finishes unwrapping Clint’s wings in silence. 

With a gentleness Clint wasn’t expecting and more care than anyone has ever shown them in Clint’s lifetime, James helps the wings unfurl. His right wing is fine, flaring behind him to stretch now that it’s finally free. His left wing, however, is not faring as well. His left side had taken the brunt of the impact when he’d shoved Steve out of the way, and it shows. 

After the first joint, the wing is mangled and out of shape, and even the slightest twitch shoots a searing pain through the entire left side of Clint’s body that makes him want to sob. 

He trained himself out of that response long ago, though, so he remains silent, though he trembles and shakes and grits his teeth so hard he feels he may break them. 

Unfurling the broken wing is almost more painful than  _ growing _ them had been. Clint’s knees nearly give out underneath him as James straightens out the wing. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” James asks then, into the too silent room and Clint freezes, cause that sort of question never precedes anything good. 

“Steve was distracted,” he’s quick to explain, because maybe a good and hasty explanation will make James less angry. “He wasn’t paying attention and there was something flying at him so I shoved him out of the way. The thing sideswiped me instead of laying him out.”

“Not that,” James snaps and Clint flinches. “What the hell were you thinking wrapping these wings like this? Are you stupid?”

Never let it be said that James Barnes sugarcoats things. 

“What? No, I--” 

James cuts him off, poking a finger into the side of his chest, where Clint’s developed a bruise that’s lasted for a fairly long time, at the edges of the bindings. “And this? This is clearly not good for you, and going out into the field with your chest wrapped up like that? Do you have a death wish?”

Clint almost says yes, but decides that is too dark of a joke for this moment. 

“No one on the team would want to look at these things. Easier for everyone if I keep them out of sight,” Clint mutters with a half-shrug. 

Clint sees James throw his hands up in the air out of the corner of his eye, and then feels when metal fingers accidentally clip his injured wing. The action is so unexpected and so is the jolt of pain that Clint cries out, a guttural, wounded animal noise that Clint is ashamed of. 

James doesn’t apologize verbally, but Clint can see it in his face, when he steps back in front of Clint, and nudges him to lie down on his stomach on the floor. 

Clint’s entire body is wracked by a fine tremor by the time he’s successfully lying down, with his wing spread next to him. 

James works quickly and quietly, exiting the room only once and returning faster than Clint thought possible with emergency supplies from Banner’s lab. He cleans the few places that Clint’s wing is bleeding and begins fashioning a splint as best he can to keep the bones of the wing immobile so that they can heal from the fractured mess they are.

The room is silent, until James, very uncharacteristically, breaks it. “Why don’t you want the others to see them?” he asks in a low voice. “They’re beautiful.”

Clint scoffs. “Yeah right. Everyone who’s ever seen these things has been disgusted by them or wanted me to use them for their own gain. Coulson was the only one who ever saw more than that, and he’s dead. Secret died with him. Or. You know now, I guess.”

James makes a face that Clint can’t decipher from this angle. 

“If I’m allowed to ask, were you born with them?”

Clint almost shakes his head. “No. After my parents died, my brother and I were taken by some lab coats to some place I can hardly remember. Didn’t get what they wanted out of my brother, but they sure as fuck got something out of me before I busted out.”

Clint thinks it must be the pain, loosening his lips this way. 

“I’m sorry about your brother,” James says and Clint laughs. He regrets that as soon as he does it, because it hurts like hell, but he has no better way to react. 

“Oh, no. He’s not dead. Or at least, he didn’t die then. He survived to become the world’s third biggest asshole,” Clint jokes. Right behind Loki and Clint’s father. James doesn’t ask about who beat Barney out though, and Clint doesn’t offer up the information. 

They’re quiet for a long moment more, and then, “You know, you’re all always telling me I shouldn’t be ashamed of my arm, just cause HYDRA gave it to me. That it’s part of me now and so it doesn’t matter where it came from, and all that shit. You’ve said something like that to me before. If you believe that about me, why’s this so different?”

Clint would shrug, if he could, and give a self deprecating smile, and crack a joke. But instead, he says, “This is different. That’s something they did to you. This was… These are all me. I’m a freak all on my own. Just needed a little bit of encouragement.”

James’ hands flex near Clint’s wing joint in his back for a split second. 

“You’re not a freak,” he says, stony cold and serious. 

Clint almost flinches and then thinks better of it, and tamps down on that response. 

“Nice of you to say, Barnes,” Clint mutters, and clenches his hands when James sets part of his wing back into place. God this fucking hurts. A thought crosses his mind then, and he curses. “I’m not going to be able to wrap them like this. Fuck. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I can’t-- Fuck.” 

James’ hands still where they’re securing the split around Clint’s wing. He presses his flesh hand to the space right in between Clint’s shoulder blade, right in between where his wings sprout from his back and he just leaves it there for a second, a gentle pressure holding him. It’s not until James increases the pressure ever so slightly that Clint realizes his breathing was becoming erratic.

He heaves a deep breath with a  _ great _ amount of effort and steadies himself. 

“Clint,” James says, in a low, level voice, not a hint of worry in it. It’s calming to Clint, more than he’d like to admit. No one’s done this for him other than Phil and his mother, no one’s ever been able to notice Clint’s panic and work him through it. James is astute though. Clint’s not surprised he noticed. He is a little surprised that he’s staying to help him though. “Breathe. You’re fine. You’re safe. You’re in Avengers Tower, it’s just you and me here. I won’t hurt you.”

Distantly, Clint recognizes those words, has heard them before. When James first came to the Tower and was dealing with a rush of almost a century’s worth of memories, and he was overwhelmed and couldn’t breathe right sometimes, Steve would sit him down, and say that to him. James was recovering remarkably well, for what he’d been through, so Steve hasn’t had to do that in weeks, over two months, but Clint can still see it, clear as day, in his mind’s eye. 

His ears are ringing, he thinks absently, and he moves to fidget with one of his hearing aids. 

James doesn’t move his hand from Clint’s back for a few more minutes, and keeps talking, low and slow, and Clint quickly feels like he can breathe easy again. 

“Clint?” he finally asks, impossibly gently for someone who looks like…. That. Clint just nods and grunts in what he hopes is a ‘go on’ sort of way. “What is the absolute worst you think will happen if the team finds out about your wings? Will you tell me?”

Clint shudders as James removes his hand. 

He does not whine at the loss, though he really kind of wants to, and how pathetic is that?

“It’ll end up just like everyone else,” Clint says after a long moment of silence, rolling the words around in his head like he’s not sure they make sense. 

“What do you mean everyone else?” James prods and Clint scowls.

“Everyone else! They’ll want me off the team, or they’ll make me into the resident freakshow, or they’ll let me stay but they’ll think I’m disgusting! None of it’s good! Are you fucking happy, Barnes?” Clint snaps, because he’s angry goddammit! Not with Barnes, sure, he’s angry with himself for being so careless and for getting himself hurt and for not being good enough and for being such a goddamn freak in the first place. 

God, if his dad could see him now he’d--

No. No, he’s not going there. He can’t do that. 

“And what’s the best case scenario?” 

Clint shakes his head. “Best case? They only show their disgust through thinly veiled looks?”

He doesn’t know. He hasn’t thought that far ahead. 

James smacks the side of his leg, probably because it’s the closest thing to him. 

“You’re really stupid sometimes, for someone so smart.”

“I have the reading comprehension ability of an eighth grader,” Clint mutters. 

“Shut the fuck up,” James snaps back. “So what, you’re not an academic genius. You’re smart, in other ways. Ways that are likely more important for you and your team. Barton, I’ve seen you practicing. Your spatial awareness is insane. Your tactical knowledge is astounding. Your skills with people are impeccable. For all your lack of a sense of self preservation, your survival skills are pretty much unmatched. So what you can’t read the  _ Iliad _ ? Who gives a shit? You’re smart in ways that keep people alive, Clint. In ways that keep your team safe and civilians out of harm’s way, and criminals off the streets. Do you get how important that is?” 

Clint half shrugs and makes a non-committal noise. “M’still a freak.”

James is a little rough with the next piece of the split he slots onto Clint’s wing and Clint grunts in pain. 

James sighs. “You’re just as stubborn as Steve, you know that, asshole?” 

“You flatter me,” Clint deadpans. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint sees James shake his head and look skyward.

“I never wanted the team to know I’m any different. No one at SHIELD besides Phil, Fury and Hill ever knew I was… this. I liked it that way. Everyone treated me like I was normal. I liked that. It was the first time in my life I wasn’t… doesn’t matter. Once they know I’m like this, the team’s going to treat me different,” Clint says, to fill the silence. 

James sits back on his heels and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Barton, do you wanna know something?” Clint makes a noise in the affirmative. “You are the first person to ever,  _ ever _ , ask me what I wanted, since the whole HYDRA thing. Not even Steve, and god save that little idiot, he’s done so much for me, but even he never asked me what I wanted to be. But within a second of knowing me, you asked me who I wanted to be. Do you have any idea how much that meant to me?” Clint shrugs and James continues, “You were the first person who didn’t handle me with kid gloves or treat me like a monster. That meant everything to me. I haven’t forgotten. I never will. I just. I want to do something to return the favor. So can you believe that I’m not lying to you, for just, two minutes?”

“I don’t think you’re lying to me,” Clint says quietly. He thinks this is the most he’s ever heard James speak all at once. 

“Good. And I’m not lying when I say that if the team can accept me, after what I’ve done, and what’s been done to me, they can accept you too, and they will, with open arms.” 

Clint shakes his head, and furrows his brow. “But this is different. I was… I mean it’s not--”

“God, shut the fuck up, Clint! There’s nothing different about what happened. HYDRA stuck a weapon to my shoulder without my consent. Some lab monkeys forced you to grow wings against your will. Different results, same principle. Someone modified our bodies without us wanting it. That’s what it boils down to. You are no different than me.”

Clint actually has to choke back a pained noise. It has nothing to do with the crushed wing. 

He turns his face away from James, pressing his forehead into the floorboards like it’ll do something for him other than leave a mark on his face. 

“I get that it’s… I mean I know how hard it was for me to follow Steve here from DC, and I’ve known Steve all my life. But these people, you all seem really, stupidly good. You can’t keep hurting yourself to keep this hidden because you think there’s a chance that they won’t like that you’re enhanced.” James studies the work he’s done on Clint’s wing and makes a face. “I also think you should tell them because Banner should probably look at this. I’ve never splinted a wing before.”

Clint coughs and gasps out a laugh. 

Who knew he’d be spending his afternoon having a heart to heart with the Winter Soldier. Who knew the guy had such a dry sense of humor. 

“Will you… if I tell them, will you be there? I don’t want to…” he trails off. He doesn’t say ‘please be there with me, I’ve afraid to do this alone, please don’t leave me alone’, but he thinks the message gets across well enough, because James nods. 

“Whatever you need, Barton.”

And Clint takes the first steady breath since he arrived back at the Tower.

Clint Barton is thirty-six years old, and he tells his team about his wings for the very first time. 

They take another three hours to return from aiding civilians and debriefing. 

JARVIS lets Clint and James know when the team arrives back on the common floor, and they go down to meet them. 

Steve has a lecture on his lips when they get down there, Clint can see it, but it dies as soon as Clint steps fully into the room. 

He’s still just wearing his uniform pants, even just the idea of wrestling into a shirt at the moment far too painful, so his wings, particularly the mangled one, are on full display. So are the blue-black bruises from where the hit had cracked a few ribs, and from where Clint’s binding had left him with ugly purple marks. 

The rest of the team are stunned into silence. 

It’s Natasha who breaks it. 

“Clint, what happened? How did-- there was no magic involved today, how did this happen?” It’s a question, but she doesn’t say it like one. 

Clint wrings his hands and his wings flare behind him nervously and he hisses at the pain. 

He can’t make himself speak for a second, so he signs to Natasha,  _ No magic. _

“No magic? What--” She cuts herself off. “Oh my god, Clint.”

Clint shrinks away from them, his wings attempting to fold away, to make him look smaller, and he is met with James’ hand at his back, the same gentle pressure between his wing joints as before.

“No magic,” he repeats, very quietly. “I’ve always-- Well, not always, but almost as long as I can remember.”

“You’ve never said anything,” Tony says, and Sam smacks his arm, in a manner he probably thinks is subtle. 

Steve’s eyes haven’t moved from his crudely splinted wing, from the bruises of cracked ribs on his chest. His face is stony and unreadable. Clint’s expecting the worst, and then Steve speaks. 

“Did this happen when you were protecting me, today? Did you let this happen to yourself to keep me safe?” He sees the guilt in Steve’s eyes then.

Clint shrugs, with only his right arm. “Healing factor or not, that thing would’ve caved your chest in. I just got clipped. It was just cause I had my wings wrapped that I got hurt like this. It’s no big deal. The ribs’ll be fine soon, and the wing shouldn’t take too long to heal, and I’ll be able to wrap them up again soon so you guys don’t have to look at them.”

Much to Clint’s surprise, it’s Banner that speaks up then. 

“No. Clint, do you have any idea how bad that is for you? Even if we did take issue with your wings, which none of us do,” he all but growls, with a warning look at the others, “you should not compromise your health for our comfort. No one will mind you letting them stay as they should be.”

Clint has never heard Banner speak with that much conviction in his voice. He’s never been more grateful for the man. 

And then Tony goes and ruins the moment. “So, no magic, how’d you get them? Born that way? Volunteer to be a science project like Cap?” 

Rhodey smacks Tony, this time, and then shares a weary look with Sam. 

Clint’s right wing flutters nervously. “Didn’t exactly volunteer,” he mumbles, and Thor holds up a hand. 

“You owe us no explanation, Barton. You are still the same great warrior who joined this team, there was simply something we didn’t know about you before, that we know about you now. That is all that we have to know.” He steps forward, and claps Clint on the right shoulder, and gives him one of those broad, beaming smiles, and heads for the kitchen. “Now, we bested an enemy in battle! That calls for celebration!” he declares, and the team, with one last glance towards Clint, nods their approval of Thor’s idea. 

Banner hangs back a moment to let Clint know he’ll look over his injuries later if he needs it, and then it’s just Clint and James, alone in the living room, while the others file into the kitchen. 

As soon as they’re gone, Clint lets himself relax. 

Immediately, his entire body starts trembling. 

James does not leave his side. 

“What did I tell you, Clint?” he says quietly, and Clint lets out a laugh that’s just a touch hysterical. “You see? Not one of them looked at you any different. A little pity about the injuries, cause they’re a bunch of saps like that. But that’s it. You’re still Clint, you’re still you, and you’ve still got the same sort of place on the team as you did before, as soon as you’re healed up.”

Clint laughs again, and turns and throws his arms around James. 

James tenses for a second, and then very carefully gives Clint a brief hug back. 

“Thank you,” Clint says, so quietly he can’t even hear himself speak. 

James just pats his arm once, and follows the others into the kitchen, shouting about how none of them know how to use a stove, and they better not have set anything on fire yet. 

Clint Barton is thirty-six years old, and he’s certain that he’s finally found a family worth fighting for.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @ [hohhawkeye!](http://hohhawkeye.tumblr.com/)


End file.
